The Columbo Group takes over The Cat and Mutton and to launch Second Blues Kitchen

January 14, 2014

London-based bar and restaurant group The Columbo Group has announced the purchase of two of East London’s most renowned venues: The Cat and Mutton on Broadway Market, and Bar Music Hall (the former Brick Lane Music Hall) on Curtain Road. These latest acquisitions bring their growing portfolio of restaurants, bars, clubs and live music venues in the capital to eight.

In ‘great hands’

East Londoners can be assured that The Cat and Mutton and Bar Music Hall are in great hands. The Columbo Group has form with ‘local legends’ having breathed life into such popular neighbourhood venues as The Old Queens Head and Paradise By Way of Kensal Green.The group knows its East London audience well, having launched high profile venues XOYO in Shoreditch and The Nest in Dalston in 2010.

Steve Ball, co-director of The Columbo Group comments:

“The opportunity to take on these two classic East London venues was too great to pass up. They’re both superb sites with great potential and a strong local story behind them. We are very excited about growing The Columbo Group’s East London presence and introducing the Blues Kitchen concept to a new audience on the Bar Music Hall site.”

Bar Music Hall becomes Blues Kitchen Shoreditch

Bar Music Hall is now closed and will open in early April as Blues Kitchen Shoreditch, an East London sibling to the original Blues Kitchen in Camden (pictured above and below) which opened in 2009.

Blues Kitchen Shoreditch will offer Texan BBQ, live music seven nights a week and one of the biggest bourbon selections in London. The vast converted Victorian warehouse will have a spacious diner alongside a capacity for 500.

The Cat and Mutton

The Cat and Mutton, the popular pub at the gateway to Broadway Market by London Fields, dates right back to the late 17th Century when, under its original name of The Cattle And Shoulder Of Mutton, it was a busy alehouse used by drovers and agricultural workers making for market in the City of London.

The handsome high-windowed corner pub over two floors was taken over by its former owners in 2003, becoming a key Hackney eating and drinking destination at the centre of the revitalisation of Broadway Market as a whole. It is currently closed for refurbishment and will reopen with a brand new look and new energy at the beginning of March in a partnership between The Columbo Group and Tom Gibson who owns Ruby’s Cocktail Bar in Dalston.

The Columbo Group

The Columbo Group was founded by Steve Ball and Riz Shaikh in 2006. Its existing venues include The Blues Kitchen in Camden, Paradise By Way Of Kensal Green, The Old Queens Head in Islington, XOYO in Shoreditch, Love & Liquor in Kilburn, and Dalston’s The Nest.

The company is known for its distinctive and stylish interior design, its roster of cutting edge live acts and DJs, and broad-minded approach to cuisine from BBQ and all-American diner fare to top quality classic British cookery.

The Columbo Group has an annual turnover of £18m, and employs around 300. It purchased the lease for The Cat and Mutton for £430,000 and for Bar Music Hall for £1m.